$30 Million Art Heist at Stockholm Museum

Three raiders entered the museum on Stockholm’s waterfront
at about 5:15 p.m. local time, while it was still open, and
seized the pictures, a police spokesman said.

The stolen works are a self-portrait by the Dutch master
Rembrandt and two works by the French impressionist
Pierre-Auguste Renoir — A Young Parisian Woman and
Conversation.

While one of the robbers, armed with a submachine gun,
threatened people in the museum lobby, the other two, one or
both also armed, ran upstairs to grab the paintings from
different rooms.

An unarmed museum guard alerted the police, but the raiders
were able to escape in a small boat. The boat was later found
near one of Stockholm’s ports, TT news agency said.

Cars Explode in Flames
Meanwhile, two cars parked nearby exploded in flames in what
appeared to be a diversion to cover their getaway.

The spokesman said it would be virtually impossible to sell
such well-known masterpieces, which together are worth about
$31.46 million, on the open market.

“Maybe they are going to blackmail the museum, or sell them
abroad to a private collector,” he said.

Forensic experts are studying the museum for clues, and
police are combing the city, but so far have no idea who the
suspects are.

The art theft is the biggest in Sweden since robbers cut
through the roof of Stockholm’s Modern Museum in 1993 and stole
eight works of art by cubist masters Pablo Picasso and Georges
Braque worth about $60 million. Most of the works were later
recovered.

The former head of Sweden’s criminal police, Tommy
Lindstrom, told TT that he believed the pictures were already
on their way out of Sweden, probably to Eastern Europe where
many newly rich businessmen were eager to invest in art.

The robbers had known exactly what they were after in their
well-planned theft, choosing works that were not too big to
carry, said Lindstrom.

“We have a kind of international criminality which didn’t
exist before. There’s no wall between us and Eastern Europe,”
he said.